Autodesk's 2012 Entertainment Creation Suite is Here!

By Eric Weiss The latest in game design and animation tools using Autodesk's 2012 Entertainment Creation Suite are now implemented in our curriculum at MMI. The 2012 release of MudBox, Maya, Motion Builder and 3DS Max are now much more integrated and allows fast and efficient paths to bring Motion Capture (MOCAP) data from our state of the art Motion Analysis Studio through our animation and game design pipeline. Some of the new tools include the inclusion of the Human IK user interface within the Maya environment. This allows for seamless mapping of characters from Motion Builder to their high resolution characters in Maya. There have been many other improvements to the Maya Animation system which allow for camera switching and, animation path editing and animation layer blending. After creating stories in their visual story telling course, Game Art & Animation (GAM) students bring their characters to life in short animated films and can even bring their characters and animation into the Unreal III (UDK) Game Engine. Our Motion Capture Studio is available for students to work on special projects and many of their upper level courses have student directed projects, allowing them to focus their studies on specific job outcomes. Our top level outcomes include character modeling, animation, level design and technical direction in many courses.